


Lonelier Version of You

by thatsrightdollface



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: (I mean like post-canon from season 2), Allison has questions about what the Luther we know isn't telling her, Comic References, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Gen, Hypothetical Post-Canon, Introspection, Season 2 spoilers!!!!, Spoilers, a couple references to the comics (I'll explain in the notes), canon-typical relationships, possibilities, she's worried about him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:16:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26041018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: “But I'll take your heart served up two ways — I sing a bitter song, I'm the lonelier version of you, I just don't know where I went wrong.” — “Rat a Tat,” Fall Out Boy feat. Courtney LoveAllison meets another universe’s Luther.
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves & Luther Hargreeves, Allison Hargreeves/Luther Hargreeves, Alternate Universe Luther Harvreeves/Original Character, mentioned others - Relationship
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	Lonelier Version of You

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!!! I hope you enjoy this. I'm sorry for any and all mistakes I might've made/things I might've gotten weird, here...... honestly, the "mysterious-timeline threats" mentioned are just an excuse to have the former Umbrella Academy meeting up with their other selves. Sorry, again, and I hope it makes sense for what it is..... I wonder how it's all gonna ACTUALLY go??? And what the TUA team would've canonically turned out like, if Reginald hadn't raised them........???
> 
> Thank you for reading. I hope you're staying safe/doing as well as possible.
> 
> A couple things:
> 
> 1\. The comic references I'm talking about in the tags areeeeeee:  
> A.) Five being Luther's biological twin and  
> B.) There's this period in the comics where Luther watches TV almost nonstop for a long time. That isn't what he's doing here, but I do refer to that potential "watch TV, and turn off your brain" impulse, in reaction to stress. 
> 
> 2\. I'm still so sad Allison doesn't know about Luther's unopened moon reports since the Day that Wasn't got undone. Klaus knows......... but possibly only Klaus.......... that's part of what I'm talking about here. :( Also, that whole thing where he stopped fighting in the boxing ring!!!

Allison Chestnut — or was she going by “Allison Hargreeves,” again, now, if she and the rest of the former Umbrella Academy ever made it out of this taunting, alternate-universe 2019 and back home? Did it even matter what had been written on her long-lost, possibly-exploded IDs? — was sitting across the table from a man who could have grown up to be Luther. 

His name was Something Else, though, like she’d known it would be. It would’ve had to be Freddy or Dennis, Matthew or Caleb, something, so many things, but Not Luther. If they hadn’t been raised together in the Umbrella Academy... branded with the team logo on their arms, taught to kill... this would’ve been Luther’s name, too, probably. Another last name, another childhood room, another first crush, another favorite coat thrown over the back of a chair. He was still strong, but his smile wasn’t as cautiously exhausted. He didn’t have a broken tooth, from bare-knuckle boxing stuck back in the 1960s, and his shoulders were only human-wide, not fused with some sort of alien gorilla DNA in a spur-of-the-moment experiment to save his life after he got sent out on a mission that’d been the death of him all alone. 

Nah. Not-Luther sat in his chair comfortably; the world seemed to fit him. He had a wedding band tattooed on his finger, and Allison had seen a woman drift through the kitchen, here, and kiss the edge of his forehead before running off to work. Not-Luther made coffee for his wife before she got up, poured into a thermos with sci-fi TV show references on it, stirred with hazelnut creamer; Not-Luther had an accent that changed his familiar voice into an almost-stranger’s. He was from an old apartment in New York with leaky pipes, maybe, or he was from a tiny town in England, or he was from a farm where he sat drinking beer with his friends in the brisk sun. Maybe he’d grown up fishing, and could’ve drawn a map of the swamps on a napkin for her; maybe his family owned a lot of sheep and lacy curtains, or maybe he’d worked for the same construction company for years, steady as the pull of gravity. There were so many places he could’ve been from – same with Allison, herself – and so many things he could’ve done with his time… again, same with Allison, herself. Not-Luther wasn’t an astronaut, that was for sure, and he’d been surprised when Allison showed up saying she needed to talk to him, saying he was Special. He knew he was weirdly strong, but... superpowers? Like the Sparrow Academy? Huh. That’s quite a thought, there, ma’am. You know he and his brother used to collect the Sparrow Academy comic books when they were kids, and he _did_ always have to try extra hard not to break stuff, but... holy shit. What? 

Hearing Not-Luther call her “ma’am” in a voice like Luther’s if he took acting classes was one of the more surreal things to happen to Allison, lately, and that was really saying something. Everything had been surreal, _everything_ , ever since Five showed up back in the sixties and it had been time to make their messy way back through the decades. Luther was... um, how to say it? Luther was such a fundamental part of Allison’s mind, of her memories. He calmed her down, and forgave her when she felt unforgivable, and lately it had felt like he was far away even when she had her hand against his back, or when she was rubbing her thumb across his enormous battered knuckles. Sitting with him as he ate a surprising amount of eggs and they researched where to find everybody they needed to find. 

Luther had hidden those hands from Allison, when he’d first came back from the moon — you know, in their actual timeline. They’d been transformed... that space-gorilla DNA, of course. Luther was hiding other things from Allison, now, and she missed him when he was in the same room as her. She missed her righteous-and-gentle, clever-and-giving husband from the sixties, Ray, and she missed her daughter Claire who didn’t exist in this universe in a way that felt unspeakable, and she missed Luther when she wasn’t sure how to get him to tell her his truth. When it felt like she didn’t know her first best friend, anymore, this guy she loved and that she’d never wanted to leave behind. 

Allison had been missing Luther for years, now — missing Luther like a constantly sore tooth, like another shadow. Didn’t he know it had meant so much to see _him_ again, too? Didn’t he believe her?

Allison suspected there were things other members of the former Umbrella Academy knew about Luther that she should know, too. Things that had broken his heart, new scars, new hang-ups, new reasons to spend so much of his time with cold TV light washing over him, statue-still and expression slack. He trained his face into a reassuring grin, when she looked at him. He promised he’d do whatever he could think of to help her see Claire again. Maybe he heard her crying in the car, when she’d thought he was asleep; maybe he knew she lay awake at night feeling the void of this world around her, this world where her daughter not only _didn’t exist yet_ but simply _didn’t exist_. 

And Luther was there for her. Allison never doubted that. But he wasn’t relaxed, around her; he’d learned how to build walls, whether he wanted to or not, and probably he thought it was to protect her, too. She had some theories, about what Luther wasn’t telling her, wasn’t asking, wanted to know even when he told her everything was fine, he didn’t need an explanation, she didn’t owe him any reassurances at all. Her answers were dangerous and clumsy, full of contradictions, full of want. Luther had given her some of his breath, when she needed it, and then apologized because maybe it was too much like kissing her. Allison’d shushed him and kissed his cheek.

Not-Luther calling Allison “ma’am” was... hah. It set her on edge, even though he was polite — way more polite than a lot of the people she’d been meeting with — and he’d let her in when she came by and said it was important. Why had he believed her? Maybe it only mattered that he had. It felt uncanny, being here, studying him. What books he had on the kitchen table, what was pinned on the fridge, what sort of life he could have had if his mother hadn’t given him to Reginald Hargreeves long ago. 

Allison kept looking at that wedding ring tattoo: Not-Luther loved this woman so much he’d made it a part of his skin. Would her version of this man have done that, given the chance? It looked like there were words, tiny words, worked into that tattoo... some poetry, maybe? Poetry Not-Luther was moved by; poetry Allison would never read. 

Allison told Not-Luther the same things they’d been offering all the others scattered across the world — the thirty-six children that hadn’t been made part of the Sparrow Academy, in this universe, which awkwardly included remixed versions of all their own selves. You know: surprise births across the globe, all on the same day, with mothers that weren’t pregnant the actual hour before... unpredictable, impossible abilities... all that. Reginald Hargreeves hadn’t _tried_ to get Allison and the others to join his makeshift superhero school, this time around, it looked like. Not-Luther didn’t realize that he would’ve been relatively easy for his birth family to hand away; he’d never grown up feeling disposable, here. 

Allison and the rest of the former Umbrella Academy were recruiting everyone they could find to help deal with the absurd, broken-timeline threats of this new universe, before said threats got a hold of them first. This was a job, more than anything else — Klaus had snickered, said Allison should have the easiest time getting Not-Luther on their side. Allison showed a video demonstrating her team's powers, even though she knew people said just asking permission to demonstrate her _own_ powers would've been more effective, and she worked to prove their position the same way she’d done plenty of times, by now. There was a script, and there was a briefcase full of evidence Five had prepared for this explicit purpose, and Luther was... _Not-Luther_ was... aw, he’d always wanted to be trusting. He’d always wanted to offer his open hands, wanted to listen and expect the best from people. He said he needed to talk to his wife about all this. He asked how many others Allison and her team had been able to find. He asked if she thought they could really figure this out — God, there were some really dangerous things coming, weren't there? If this was true. Would him coming along to help, you know, actually do any _good_? 

When Allison had asked Luther — _her_ Luther — if she’d be able to see Claire again, coming back to 2019, he’d said he wasn’t sure he should make any promises. This was kind of like that. This was existential, and ridiculous; this was the sort of story Allison had skimmed in especially-confusing movie scripts, and the former Umbrella Academy could only try their best. 

They had found Not-Luther and Not-Vanya, Not-Diego and Not-Allison. They hadn’t found Not-Five or Not-Klaus, yet, but apparently this man who could’ve been Luther had a twin brother? That sounded pretty promising. _Apparently_ his brother was a snarky know-it-all, and when Allison asked why they’d been able to find records of him, but not his brother, Not-Luther raised his eyebrows and said, “Well, that’d have something to do with his line of work, I guess.”

Yeah. Promising, right? 

So, Allison had done her job, here. Not-Luther was going to meet her and the rest of their team for more information, apparently bringing his wife along so she stayed in the loop/was in as little danger from whatever exactly it was coming after them as possible/could work with him to figure out what had to come next. It was sweet and sad, listening to him talk about his wife. Luther... Allison’s actual Luther, the one who had a hard time finding clothes to fit, the one who would be waiting for her in their team’s shared row of motel rooms when she got back... could’ve been like this, too. It was so easy to see. Why wasn’t Allison leaving? 

Allison wanted to get back to the motel and see the version of this man she knew — wanted to heal something between them she wasn’t sure how to heal. She had to fight to get back to Claire, had to work to fix the wrongness in their world, had to save the day, again. If the day _could_ be saved. Hard to say, right?

So then why wasn’t Allison leaving?

Sitting across from Not-Luther, in a kitchen filled with cozy soft morning light, Allison found herself asking him questions she knew he couldn’t answer. Just a couple, at first. Because her Luther could’ve been like him, possibly — because maybe he’d know... 

Allison had told Not-Luther all the appropriate, agreed-upon parts of their story, but now she was telling him more. She had told him there was another, alternate-universe version of himself that had been a superhero, once, but now she said he was so, so important to her, and it seemed like he was in a dark place. A place he wouldn’t let her follow. Obviously she didn’t give the details. Allison had told Not-Luther they were in a difficult situation, but now she told him a little about what they had lost. Why she, personally, was afraid. It wasn’t — I mean, Allison didn’t reveal any _secrets_. But it was more than she’d been planning to give. It probably sounded impossible, but like… _all_ of this probably sounded impossible, right? That was what Five's demonstration briefcase was for.

Allison wanted to ask, _“If you were hiding inside yourself, how would somebody reach you?”_

Allison wanted to ask, _“If you kept throwing yourself at danger, what would your wife do to stop you?”_

Something like that. 

But of course she only tiptoed around those points, and Not-Luther watched her, arms folded in front of him on the table. Chewing on his lip. 

Finally, he said, “Must be weird to talk to me, then. Given all this.”

And, “Yeah,” Allison said. “It really is.”

“I mean, I don’t know this guy. But if he’s another version of me — if he _really is_ , and this isn’t some sort of cult your trying to get me to join — I’d say he probably doesn’t want to be alone? I dunno. I’ve never been good on my own. He’s probably happy you’re there for him at all.”

Allison took in a shaky breath. Watched a tree sway outside the window for a moment. “He’s been alone a long time,” she said. “I don’t know if he believes he isn’t, yet.”

Not-Luther looked like he had a lot of questions about that, but he shook them off like stomping mud from his boots before coming inside. He asked, “Is he?"

"Not anymore."

"You’ll show him, then.”

Why was _that_ what got tears burning behind Allison’s eyes? She ducked her head, ran a hand over her chin, down her neck. 

Not-Luther’s expression looked resolute and protective, for a second — unnervingly familiar. “I can talk to him, if you want,” he offered. 

“No. Thank you. What... what would you even say?”

“Uh... ‘hey, so what was our superhero name, then?’ I think.”

Allison snickered. Aw. “Spaceboy.”

“Huh — not Space _man_?”

“The papers started using that name when he was still pretty young. But it’s okay, really, about you talking to him.” How would Luther feel, seeing this other version of himself? Married, still wearing his original skin? Allison sort of wanted to shield his eyes. Turn him away, take his face in her hands, and say — 

“Well. Lemme know if you change your mind,” Not-Luther said. He smiled — trying to be reassuring — and Allison let herself imagine a world where she called Luther by this stranger’s name. Where they’d met later in life, maybe; where it was possible neither of them would’ve ever known what it felt like to break somebody else’s bones in their hands on purpose. Allison Chestnut... Allison Hargreeves... the Rumor... Number Three of the Umbrella Academy shivered, feeling too many things to name, to untangle. Not-Luther didn't notice.

And then Allison gathered her briefcase demonstration back up, said her goodbyes, and left.


End file.
